[Keynes argued that] money...was an inherently political tool. It was the state that determined what substance—gold, paper, whatever—actually counted as money—what “thing” people and the government would accept as valid payment. The state thus created money and had always regulated its value.... The very idea of capitalism required active state economic management—the regulation of money and debt.
Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace
It is not a correct deduction from the principles of economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest.
John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire, as quoted by Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Humans were one lucky tribe of apes with just enough intelligence and creativity to build a badly functioning civilization. And being only barely competent, there was no reason to believe that humanity's greatest achievements amounted to anything more than the average anthill lost on the infinitely intriguing savanna.
Robert Reed, "Integral Nothings" (Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February, 2021)
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.
H.G.Wells, The Time Machine
Global markets suffer from weak governance and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy…. If you want more and better markets, you have to have more (and better) governance. Markets work best not where states are weakest, but where they are strong.... Even though it is possible to advance both democracy and globalization…this requires the creation of a global political community that is vastly more ambitious than anything we have seen to date or are likely to experience soon. It would call for global rule making by democracy…. Democracies have the right to protect their social arrangements, and when this right clashes with the requirements of the global economy, it is the latter that should give way.
Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy
It rarely paid to frighten people but it never paid to confuse them.
Lifted & spun a bit from Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata
Everyone but an economist knows without asking why money shouldn’t buy some things.
Arthur Okun, (cited in in the New York Review)
THE MASS of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, gaolers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Others—as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders—serve the State chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.
A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.
Henry David Thoreau, The Duty of Civil Disobedience
